How We Focus On Earth Day…Every Day

Earth Day is once again upon us, serving as a needed reminder of the complex environmental challenges we face today. When Earth Day was conceived 46 years ago, the concerns were surprisingly not all that different than those top of mind now: gas guzzling vehicles, oil spills, air and water pollution, etc.

As the Earth Day website points out, Earth Day is meant to be about more than a single day. It’s a global call-to-action for individuals, businesses, and organizations to make a positive impact on our planet – or as we like to say, Earth Networks has for 20 years been Taking the Pulse of the Planet®. Earth Day is about action more than words, and we wanted to share a few areas where we are indeed taking action – and seeing real results.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions

For more than 20 years, Earth Networks has operated the world’s largest and most comprehensive weather observation, lightning detection, and climate (Greenhouse Gas) networks – with more than 10,000 neighborhood-level sensors installed at schools, stadiums and businesses.

Earth Networks is helping organizations reduce carbon emissions by fulfilling the need for precise greenhouse gas data.  Deploying a network of GHG monitoring instruments on a large scale provides key data that can help explain the science behind carbon emissions and environmental patterns. The data has the potential to:

• Establish the first-ever regional baseline and trend measurements of critical environmental factors needed by researchers and policy makers.
• Provide standardized measurement, reporting and verification capabilities for the international community.
• Help governments and other organizations to stay informed on current environmental observations.
• Educate the public about greenhouse gas emission levels.

We use a top-down approach to accurately measure atmospheric greenhouse gasses, as well as use a measurement technique called “inverse modeling” that will make it possible to trace atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions back to their source. Through our unique process, we will strengthen the understanding of environmental patterns, their causes, and their effects – in turn providing the scientific community and general public valuable, actionable information they can use regarding environmental issues and climate science.

Enabling intelligent energy efficiency

By integrating our proprietary weather data with connected thermostats and smart meters, Earth Networks creates a unique thermodynamic model for the home that offers consumers analytics that are easy-to-understand, and intelligent demand response through the optimization and automated control of HVAC systems, appliances and more. Utility partners get the benefit of greater reliability through improved energy efficiency and more consistent peak load reduction.

As we’ve shared, our approach enables more intelligent demand response: National Grid released a study finding WeatherBug home delivers 3x higher consumer energy efficiency, with 11.4 percent more saved on home cooling when its capabilities integrate with a connected thermostat.

Empowering a smart consumer

Earth Networks’ WeatherBug mobile app is the first to integrate weather data, connected thermostats, and utility meter data – a fundamentally different smart home approach that provides consumers with unmatched real-time analytics on how weather impacts their current energy usage in order to make smarter home energy efficiency and utility costs decisions.

Integrated smart home technology today is restricted to what is happening in the home, but 50% of a home’s energy usage is driven by the weather.  The WeatherBug mobile app extends the ‘smart home’ outside of the home to create a “smarter consumer” by integrating data from its weather network (the world’s largest) with the most robust IoT-centric ecosystem of smart home partners in the industry, including Nest, Samsung SmartThings, Comcast, Honeywell, Emerson, Accelerated Innovations, ecobee and utility providers. Through access to predictive energy usage and costs, we are enabling consumers to positively impact the planet through more efficient energy usage.

We are pleased to play a small part in advancing Earth Day’s mission.